VW ID.7 winter range test

Volkswagen released the ID.7 only last year, with first customers getting their hands on the electric sedan only recently. The ID.7 is touted as the sedan we have all been waiting for - a comfortable, electric long-range cruiser that wants to (unofficially) replace the good old Passat. What better way to see if any of VW’s statements hold any water, than actually taking the ID.7 out for a drive?

That’s exactly what YouTuber Battery Life did - not once, but twice. The first time he took the ID.7 out for a steady 81 mph highway run with the heat pump switched on due to the outside temperatures hovering below freezing. The results were… let’s say interesting. For the sake of honest comparison, Battery Life did the same test but this time without the heating switched on. In fact, he switched everything off, donned a woolly hat and gloves, and got on with the test. Here it is:

Let’s just take a moment for the results to sink in. Without any heater, with no music - just the ID.7 and the open highway, the car managed to achieve an average consumption of 219.5 Wh/km (just over 353 Wh/mile). With the 77 kWh battery pack that means 210 miles of driving range at highway speed. That’s 54.4% of the ID.7’s WLTP range of 386 miles.

In the previous video test, the ID.7 managed to achieve nearly 190 miles due to the lower ambient temperature and the heating being switched on. That’s only 49.1% of the claimed WLTP range.

The results are quite disappointing. The EV batteries suffer in the cold and driving at 81 mph is far from being efficient. But 186 miles of range can hardly be called “long-range” cruising - Volkswagen is stretching its imagination quite a bit here. We have no doubts that the ID.7 can exceed its WLTP range if driven in the city, at low speeds and with plenty of stop-and-go traffic. But it fails to deliver on the highway - which is where it is supposed to excel, according to VW.

We can blame the WLTP for its testing routine being inadequate, we can blame the VW for stretching the truth like a rubber band. The test results are abysmal - in reality, nobody will drive from full to empty battery. Topping up to 80% and going down all the way to 10% means 132 miles of driving with the heater switched on - at 81 mph that means less than 1 hour and 40 minutes between every charge. So much for long-range cruising.

Not all is bad though, there’s a silver lining here. According to the test, the heat pump only uses a smidgen over 5% of the battery charge. We expect Volkswagen to blast about that from the rooftops.